


Chapter Eight And A Half

by 5354dandelion1134



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, Gratuitous Face Touching, The Other Final Frontier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22395460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5354dandelion1134/pseuds/5354dandelion1134
Summary: 48 hours before Ash heads back to the 23rd century. How will he and Michael spend it?
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler | Voq
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	Chapter Eight And A Half

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Unscripted Days Ahead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22178656) by [5354dandelion1134](https://archiveofourown.org/users/5354dandelion1134/pseuds/5354dandelion1134). 



> So this piece is best understood as a supplement to a longer and more developed work I posted a few weeks ago. While I hope Chapter Eight And A Half is reasonably effective as a stand-alone piece, I’m pretty sure it will work better if you first take a few minutes to read The Unscripted Days Ahead (which I've linked to this piece by identifying it as an inspiration, which seems a bit weird, but I wasn't sure how else to link the two). 
> 
> Chapter Eight And A Half is the result of me wanting to play a bit more in some of the emotional space I didn’t fully explore in the first piece (space that lies, in case you are wondering about the title, between chapters eight and nine in The Unscripted Days Ahead). I’m putting up Chapter Eight And A Half as a separate piece because I think the two pieces differ sufficiently in pacing and scale to require it. That said, I hope they each function to add depth and context to the other. Thanks for reading – I hope you enjoy.

Saru is waiting in the shuttle bay when Ash and Michael arrive in the shuttle. He closes the bay doors behind their vessel and then steps forward to meet them, eager to offer his congratulations. They are back from Xahea with the specs for the incubator they hope will aid with the recrystallization of dilithium in the 32nd century and stabilization of time crystals in the 23rd. A successful mission twice over. 

Inside the shuttle, Ash completes the docking sequence. He finds his hands hovering over the controls longer than strictly necessary, drawing out a routine procedure he is, this time, none too eager to complete. Eventually, he lifts his hands away. He turns to Michael. “We’d better not keep your Captain waiting,” he says softly.

Saru’s congratulations are effusive and his welcome is warm. All business, Michael begins her report, summarizing their experiences and underlining what they learned. Ash watches Saru’s eyes as he listens to his First Officer, thinking how the standard chain of command doesn’t capture what flows between Michael and Saru. In the crucible of the 32nd century, they seem to have forged a working relationship capitalizing on the skills each possesses and turning on a deep well of personal trust. It’s bittersweet for Ash. He’s grateful to Saru and the crew for sticking with Michael in her leap to the future, for making the trip he couldn’t make himself. But to see her slip so readily back in to her role here only reminds him that his duty lies elsewhere. 

Ash finds himself trailing slightly behind the other two as they make their way out of the shuttle bay and into the ship’s corridors. He realizes that, even as Michael continues her report, she and Saru are automatically heading toward sickbay in keeping with Starfleet protocol, which stipulates a precautionary evaluation after any away mission. 

These days, Ash avoids medical examinations. Every so often, Starfleet requests another round of tests, a new type of exam. Unless he’s ordered to submit, he always declines. Ash used to think of himself as a physical guy, one who enjoyed what his body could do, whether sailing a boat or fulfilling his duties aboard a starship. He’s better than he was – he’s no longer quite so hyper aware of the stretch of his skin, the workings of his insides – but physicality is still not the refuge it used to be. 

Beyond all that, he certainly isn’t going to appear unannounced a second time in Dr. Culber’s domain, given the history between them. It’s not something you get over, having your neck broken. Or breaking someone’s neck. 

Ash makes a small sound to attract the attention of the other two. “I’m just going to…” he trails off, completing the sentence with a vague head gesture back in the direction of the guest quarters he’s been assigned.

Saru and Michael stop and turn toward him. “Of course, Commander,” Saru says. “What are,” Saru’s voice trails off momentarily, his eyes flick briefly toward Michael before return to Ash, “what are your plans?”

Ash knows Saru has stopped himself from directly specifying his impending return to the 23rd century, knows the empathetic Kelpien has done so out of consideration for what Saru recognizes as the personal costs of Ash’s professional obligations. 

“I’d like to get a night’s sleep, spend tomorrow making some minor repairs to the shuttle, and then head out the day after that. Starfleet expected me gone for two weeks, and I’ll still be roughly in line with that,” Ash says. “If that timeline sounds okay to you, Captain,” he rushes to add. 

At Saru’s nod, Ash turns and heads toward guest quarters. He feels Saru and Michael watching him leave, and it feels like a rehearsal of sorts. 

**

Michael and Saru continue their discussion through Dr. Culber’s routine examination. They’ve had a general plan for what they would do with the incubator specs, but the details still need working out. They make a significant amount of headway before arriving at a point where it seems necessary to convene a meeting of senior officers to discuss next steps. Michael is offering to arrange things for early the next morning when Saru interrupts her, seemingly thinking out loud: “I think it would be best to schedule the meeting for 48 hours from now,” he says.

Michael quirks her head, gives it a small shake. Their mission is urgent; the fate of the Federation may hinge on the dissemination of the technology to recrystallize dilithium they hope Po’s specs will afford them. Why would they delay?

Seemingly oblivious to Michael’s unspoken question, Saru nods and continues, “Yes, please make the arrangements for 1100 hours the day after tomorrow. Today, I think Dr. Culber would agree with me that some rest might be in order. Tomorrow, I’d like you to help Commander Tyler with his shuttle, and then the following day you can assist with his departure before attending the meeting.”

“Saru…” Michael’s tone is low, her thoughts conflicted. She’s hardly a mechanic or an engineer; there are others better equipped to aid Ash with his shuttle. The illogical assignment removes any doubt about why Saru proposes putting off the planning session for a couple days. The prospect of a few more hours with Ash holds a powerful appeal, but how can this personal circumstance even be considered alongside the fate of the Federation?

Saru’s tone is clear and definitive, ringing out before Michael even figures out how to voice what she’s thinking. “Those are my orders. I’ll have Stamets and Tilly immediately start analysis on Po’s incubator specs. We may even end up with additional useful information by the time we meet.” 

But Saru isn’t finished. He softens his voice before continuing, leans slightly toward her, his words taking on that touch of the melodramatic that characterizes the Kelpien at his most heartfelt: “Michael, take the time. If not for this, what is time even for?”

**

Michael leaves sickbay knowing exactly where she’s going. She strides through the hallways as briskly as she makes her way to the bridge to begin every shift. But this isn’t a question of duty to Starfleet. 

The door chimes, and then he’s there. He’s had time to clean up a bit, hair newly combed, clad in uniform pants and a black t-shirt. She’s still in her tactical uniform, still covered in two days’ worth of mission grime, but neither of them care. He grabs her hand, pulls her inside, and the door closes behind her. 

He doesn’t let go of her hand, but beyond that, they are not yet touching, just standing together, so close and so quiet. Breathing each other’s air, eyes wide, taking each other in. The mission isn’t completely over, it will never really be over, but still there’s this. A moment in which they’re not off on some hostile vessel, not away on some unfamiliar planet. Just together, on a ship that is the closest thing to home either of them has known in as long as they can bear to remember. 

As they stand there, Ash feels the space between them change, become charged with a different sort of potential. The magnetism between them, electric to them both, the reason what lies between them has never been a secret, from each other or from anyone else. Ash feels his breathing picking up, sees Michael lick and part her lips. His consciousness shrinks down to the outlines of their bodies, the brush of air between them. Finally, finally, for a moment at least, there’s nothing but this. 

They both move at the same time, their bodies crashing together, hands everywhere, mouths finding each other. It’s explosive, emotion and desire surging outward from them both. Her breasts against his chest, her tongue in his mouth, all of it, all at once. Ash feels himself pushed backward by her body, her hands pulling his ass toward her even as she surges forward, like she’s desperate to get closer. 

Ash’s guest quarters aren’t big; as he moves back, he feels the edge of the standard-issue Starfleet sofa against the back of his legs. Stumbling a bit with the rush of it all, he steps slightly to the side, pivots, and guides Michael down to the sofa before coming to his knees in front of her. She sits forward, legs splayed, Ash between them. Both of them breathing hard and fast. Her hands are on his shoulders, in his hair, pulling him in for another probing kiss. His hands drift up from her knees, his thumbs tracking along the inside of her thighs where he knows the skin to be so soft beneath her uniform. Michael groans into his mouth and he can feel his stomach clench in answer, his cock already so hard inside his pants. He moves his mouth along her jaw and down her neck, relishing her taste, salty-sweet after their two days on the planet. 

Even as she pants out his name, Michael’s hands drift down his back, find the edge of his t-shirt. She grabs and tugs up; he rounds his shoulders and pulls back to finish the job. Michael drops the shirt and quickly chases after him with her body, perched right on the edge of the sofa now, hands working their way up his stomach, a thumb drifting over a nipple, Ash groaning in response. Through half-closed eyes, he sees her smile at this, feels her lean forward still more to bring her lips and tongue to his skin. 

Ash hears himself grow louder, sounds falling from his mouth, head lolling back on his shoulders. It’s not just her tongue on his nipple, not really. It’s all of it, the success they’ve had with the mission, the comfortable room on this familiar ship, the woman before him, her mouth and hands moving across his bare skin in an expression of her desire for him. Of her desire to be with him.

Ash’s heart is pounding. His body feels electric, alive, thrumming with the moment. And fully his. 

Michael lifts her head, brings a strong hand to the back of his neck, so eager to pull him back in, but he resists, the muscles of his neck and back tightening. He’s grown accustomed to living within it, this altered body of his, but there’s no forgetting. If anyone should fear whatever secrets remain within his flesh, it’s this woman, the one he loves, the one Voq tried to kill. But here she is, hungry for him, desperate to bring their bodies together once more. 

He pants into the small measure of space between them. He’s looking at her, can’t take his eyes off her, but for a moment at least, he’s thinking of himself, of how it feels to have her pull him in, like it is exactly right, like there’s nothing wrong with him. Like she’s been waiting for him. Like she’s ready, so ready, to welcome him home. 

**

Ash and Michael already have spent a number of hours working on his shuttle, getting it prepared for the return trip to the 23rd century. The repairs are fairly minor but they take some time, and it is well past lunch before they start to wrap up. 

He’s stowing some tools toward the rear of the shuttle when Ash stills for a moment, looking at the bench along the shuttle wall. “Remember when we went out to save your Vulcan dad?”

“Mmm hmm.” Michael’s looking at him, eyebrows slightly raised. The memory is powerfully clear for both of them, their initial meeting and early interactions wrapped around an effort to save the injured Sarek, who was drifting unconscious in a damaged shuttle. They’ve talked about it a bit, about Michael’s difficult relationship with her adoptive father, but Ash has learned that, with Michael, there’s always more to discover. 

“I’d never heard of a katra before that,” Ash says, referring to the soul connection Michael shares with her adoptive father. “Do you still feel him? Sarek, I mean. Across time.” 

Ash’s voice is calm, casual, but they both know they are wandering into murky terrain, close to the limits they’d set for themselves when, before their mission to Xahea, Michael had declined to ask questions about the 23rd century. The katra question is something Ash has wondered about, not all the time, but often enough. When it’s dark and it’s late and he feels especially keenly the jagged edges of his body, the firm limits of his place in the timestream. It’s his habit, in those moments, to find a portal, to look out at the stars. As if he might see some sign there, some further signal. As if the problem was one of space and not of time. 

Occasionally, he has idly thought about reaching out to Sarek, though Ash would be hard pressed to articulate exactly why. Maybe to see if, by any chance, the Vulcan could still feel his adoptive daughter across the 930 years now separating them. Or maybe just to seek some sort of kinship with the one person who, considering the soul-deep connection between father and daughter, might have some context for the scope of Ash’s loss. 

After a moment, Michael answers in a soft voice. “No. I don’t. The connection was broken when I went through the wormhole.” She sighs before continuing. “I wasn’t surprised. Vulcans have always considered time travel … imprudent.” She stops there, choosing not to continue, not to go on to describe the moment, a few days after her arrival in the 32nd century, when she had suddenly realized the connection to Sarek was gone. A background noise, like the engines of a starship, rarely noticed until it was silenced. At that point, she was still alone in the future, not yet back among Discovery and the crew, and the absence of her link to Sarek underlined her profound isolation. It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar feeling; she’d felt it before. Like right after she’d lost her parents in the Klingon attack. Or when Voq’s emergence had robbed her of Ash’s support aboard the ISS Shenzhou. But it also wasn’t easy.

They stand for a minute in the quiet of the shuttle. Ash still facing toward the bench, Michael toward the shuttle door, at odd angles from each other. Then Michael turns toward him, finds his hands with hers. She takes a deep breath before raising her eyes, knowing she’ll see in his face a mirror for her own losses. After a moment, Ash pulls her to his chest, anchors his arms around her. He inhales slowly, lets it out in a rush. 

Michael knows what’s coming, knows that Ash has been obliged by circumstance to hone his ability to move through pain, both physical and otherwise. He presses his lips to her forehead before loosening his arms, putting some space between them. He finds her eyes and gives a smile, small but genuine. 

“At least it won’t be just nutrition cubes for dinner tonight. What’s best out of Discovery’s replicators these days?” Ash’s words might seem dismissive, inappropriately flippant, but Michael knows what he’s doing. He’s calling her back, inviting her to stay in the moment with him. The moment they have. It takes some effort, but she is genuinely happy to follows his lead, glad to be with him, right here, right now. 

“Burgers and fries still seem pretty popular,” she says, referring to his meal of choice, one that fails to align with her own nutrition-focused approach to food selection. “And actually, I could go for that myself,” she adds, looking at him through slightly narrowed eyes, anticipating the flash of surprise she knows this will elicit. When it comes, raised eyebrows and a bright open-mouthed smile, it is exactly what she needs. 

**

Michael lies in the dim starlight of Ash’s guest quarters, propped up on an elbow. She’s watching him sleep. He’s nestled into her, his breath slow and deep, his hair splayed over his profile. They’d spent the evening together, of course, both of them deliberately focused on each other, on the here and now. At this point, it’s deep into the night, only hours before she’ll help him launch his shuttle to head back to the 23rd century. 

There’s very little she wouldn’t give for more time with him, but still, she’s glad he’s sleeping. She knows all too well the strain of traveling by time crystal, the unnatural jolt experienced by any three-dimensional creature who chooses – or is obliged – to travel through time. He’ll need his rest, she thinks, as she gently pushes his hair back from his temple. 

She also knows that sleep does not come easily to Ash. She’s witnessed his nightmares on a number of occasions, when he wakes, sweaty and gasping, eyes moving fast with fear. He’s always been willing to talk to her about what happened to him, at least so far as he remembers it. To outline, in broad terms at least, the contours of his experiences and the choices he made to survive. But she doesn’t know the precise details on which his mind catches while he sleeps, the particular images and episodes that haunt him the most. 

She wonders if his nightmares have eased over their year apart, smoothing her hand across his hair once more, running the back of her fingers along his beard. She wonders how she appears in his dreams, idly considering which of their shared moments his mind might revisit in sleep. 

For her part, in her dreams, it’s mostly images, fragments. Seeing him across a crowded room, laughing with colleagues, his eyes lighting up in a whole new way as she approaches. Sitting with him in the mess hall, listening to stories that get more outlandish by the minute, knowing he’s playing for her smile. A glance across the bridge or the conference table, wholly intimate, even amid the latest Starfleet crisis. 

And also: the touch of his fingertips on her cheekbones, his tongue and teeth along her hips and the inside of her thighs, him moving inside her, his sharp intake of breath, his eyes cataloguing her pleasure. 

Occasionally, she’ll wake with a terrified gasp, the fading sensation of hands around her neck, harsh Klingon words echoing in her ears. In those moments, she reaches for a small twist of rope, uses it to tether herself to what she knows for sure: who Ash is and who he is to her. 

She wonders what fragments of these past few days will show up in her dreams to come, once he’s gone again. 

Gently, he stirs, opens his eyes. Michael blinks rapidly, but even though he’s hazy with sleep, she’s unable to wipe the emotion from her face before he registers it. 

He doesn’t need to ask because he already knows. He brings a gentle hand to her cheek. “Easy, Michael.” A phrase he’s used so many times with her, usually to teasingly talk her down. But the tone is different now, intimate, soft. A wish he has for her, a gift he’d like to leave behind. 

She smiles as much as she can, nuzzles a kiss into the palm of his hand. Easy.


End file.
